There is no doubt that technology has reached a whole new level in our modern culture. It is not only important to make note of the technological advances, but all that comes with it, such as the different apps, search engines, social networking, etc... When I would do research for school related reasons, I always used the same resources: Google or the University of Akron's resource database on the Bierce Library page. I never thought to try out any other search engine or even make use of social networks for educational reasons. I perceived social networking sites to be used for maintaining connections with friends, not so much for professional reasons and ideas. Turns out, that is not the case at all.
Now that I have been exposed to these search engines (wolframalpha, spezify, sweet search, ipl2, InstaGrok...) and other uses for social networking, I see how it affects teaching and education. It is beneficial for students to know of such tools, and for teachers to be up to date with them to be able to share with their students. These resources help students to attain loads of valuable information in an extremely short amount of time. Not only is it time effective, but these different search engines accommodate different individuals and learning styles.
Now that I have been exposed to these search engines (wolframalpha, spezify, sweet search, ipl2, InstaGrok...) and other uses for social networking, I see how it affects teaching and education. It is beneficial for students to know of such tools, and for teachers to be up to date with them to be able to share with their students. These resources help students to attain loads of valuable information in an extremely short amount of time. Not only is it time effective, but these different search engines accommodate different individuals and learning styles.
Diigo is a great website for tagging and bookmarking webpages. It all saves to one library you can easily go back to and retrieve any website that you saved. It also allows for one to highlight and post sticky notes to the webpage and saves that information you thought was most important. Not only can you retrieve past information that you saved yourself, but you can also view information and websites saved by other individuals that you are in a group with. Very useful!
Lastly, InstaGrok is another amazing resource for learning about any given topic. It serves to make connections and show those connections in a conceptual map, laying all of the information right in front of you. You can also adjust the level of learning to make it more applicable to a certain age group.
These are just a handful of some of the amazing search engines that are available. The possibilites are definitely not just limited to these selections made, these are just ones that have recently come across to me from class. Although I find all of them to be very useful, the three I would see myself using the most for myself as well as implementing in my own classroom are Spezify, InstaGrok, and Diigo. I really like the visual aspects of Spezify; that has always been one way I have enjoyed learning. Instagrok is just a flat out awesome way to learn all of the different aspects that come along with a topic of interest. I have also been one to always highlight and make notes while reading to help retain information, and that is exactly what Diigo allows you to do while being online. Being able to share the information with others is also amazing to me. It really makes me wish I knew about these resources the rest for the rest of my schooling!